Archive for the 'Kristian Bush' Tag Under 'Soundcheck' Category

It's hard to turn your eyes away from Jennifer Nettles. Sure, she's beautiful; her features are soft and practically flawless. But it isn't just the pretty face you find yourself entranced with while she's floating around on stage -- it's her charisma, and the fact that you leave feeling like she's your new best friend.

She commands attention without demanding it, and at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater on Saturday, she never missed a beat.

Of course, Sugarland, the award-winning, increasingly popular country duo, isn't just about Nettles. Her musical partner Kristian Bush is often just as animated while keeping up with Nettles' silly antics and funny faces. Still, it's clear who many fans came to see in Irvine.

In a nearly 20-song set, Sugarland was able to not only include basically every hit the pair have ever had, but they had the audience believing it was all our idea what they would play. That's the basis of this In Your Hands tour, which invites fans to go to the band's website to request up to 15 songs for a coming gig. Text voting is also involved, as well as radio feedback (locally via KFRG) and my personal favorite, handwritten signs that Nettles requested the audience pass to the front of the amphitheater so she could lay them all out on stage.

July 26th, 2011, 11:30 am by KELLI SKYE FADROSKI, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

There's such incredible chemistry between Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush. The country duo, who took the stage with a full band Monday night for the first of two shows at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, looked like they were having an absolute blast throughout their 90-minute set.

The audience definitely fed off that energy – people were on their feet for most of the show, happily obliging multiple singalongs and clapping during particular tunes. Nettles proved once again to be a mighty vocalist, hitting high and low notes and even rapping a bit in songs like “Stuck Like Glue” and “Every Girl Like Me.”

Sugarland's debut hit, “Baby Girl,” was treated to an acoustic version – or a “campfire version,” as Nettles called it, for which even she picked up an acoustic guitar. During “Everyday America,” on the other hand, the group tossed in a medley in the middle that included snippets from Cee Lo Green's “F*** You,” Britney Spears' “…Baby One More Time,” Dolly Parton's “9 to 5” and Destiny's Child's “Bootylicious.”

The booty shake Nettles did during that last track would have made her friend Beyoncé proud. She also showed off her favorite dance from the early ‘90s: “That's the Roger Rabbit and I used to kill it,” she told the audience after demonstrating her signature move at her senior prom in 1993.

Mid-show, Bush decided to give away his acoustic guitar; he held it high in the air and the crowd went bananas. He and Nettles quickly signed the instrument with a Sharpie and he headed into the crowd in search of the perfect fan to hand it off to.

July 21st, 2011, 4:00 pm by KELLI SKYE FADROSKI, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

It's already been a long year for Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush. The duo, together known as multiplatinum country act Sugarland, has been touring nearly nonstop behind their fourth release, last October's The Incredible Machine. Plans to push the album, building on the award-winning momentum set by breakthroughs Enjoy the Ride (2006) and Love on the Inside (2008), are centered on an entire year of touring that found them performing new tracks well before Machine dropped, including at a memorable Greek Theatre debut last July.

Sugarland kicked off the second leg with shows in Europe in late winter and into the spring before heading back to the U.S. But Bush says they're still filled with energy and can't wait to get in front of Southern California audiences, starting Saturday at Rimac Field in La Jolla and continuing with a return to the Greek for two shows, Monday and Tuesday, with Sara Bareilles (of “Love Song” fame) and American Idol finalist Casey James opening.

During a phone chat earlier this week, Bush said he and Nettles are excited too meet up again with their increasingly big California fan base, especially after selling out the Greek last summer and being so well-received when they co-headlined the Stagecoach festival in Indio in April 2010.

“Jennifer and I kind of thrive on large crowds,” he says of that appearance. “It's one of those things where our stress reaction is to have fun. So you put us under pressure and all of a sudden it just kinda works."

“What that does," he continues, "is allow for moments like that, when there are 70,000 people in front of you, where we can perform in such a way that it's really about the audience and less about us. That's really what a live show is about. We're fans of music, and I really don't think you can properly go perform or entertain unless you are a fan, because you have to always remember what it's like to be on the other side of that bicycle rack.”

There was a powerful moment deep into Sugarland's Greek Theatre debut Thursday night that explained why out of all the country-pop acts as of late -- Little Big Town, Lady Antebellum, Taylor Swift -- the Atlanta songwriting duo of vocalist Jennifer Nettles and guitarist Kristian Bush is indeed a cut above, deserving of both its mega-platinum status and clutch of notable awards.

By the time they got to “Stay,” the clear highlight among a standout-filled 90-minute set, they had already hooked in the packed house with an hour of big hits, including their Winter Olympics single “Wide Open” to start, all three chart-toppers (“All I Want to Do,” “Already Gone” and “It Happens”) from 2008's Love on the Inside, plus a scaled-back, accordion-soaked take on “Baby Girl” and the same sort of covers-stuffed, genre-blurring playfulness they indulged at Stagecoach in April.

For this gig, one of the splashiest on a lengthy tour behind a new album (The Incredible Machine) that doesn't drop until Oct. 19, Nettles & Bush tucked Beyoncé's “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” the Jackson 5's “I Want You Back” and Miley Cyrus' “Party in the U.S.A.” into the middle of “Everyday America.” It wouldn't be the last time they'd reach for someone else's material to add extra zest: later on they sandwiched a bit of Neil Diamond's “Sweet Caroline” between an irrepressibly optimistic new ditty (“Find the Beat”) and their version of the Bon Jovi collaboration “Who Says You Can't Go Home.” They also curiously ended their encore not with one of their own smashes but with a faithful take on the Bee Gees' disco classic “Stayin' Alive.” (Guess that makes some sense -- they did do Blondie's “Heart of Glass” in Indio.)

All that jazz as well as a retro-futuristic stage design straight out of “The Wild Wild West” kept the crowd on its feet and experiencing fun overload, further enhanced by Nettles' sassy asides -- about the whiff of weed in the air, or how it doesn't take much for her to “go all prom 1993 on you,” complete with red taffeta, big bangs and a little LL Cool J on the radio. (So it wasn't just coincidence, then, that he was in the audience?)

Yet I'd bet many people would agree that Nettles' piercing, emotionally naked performance of “Stay,” with only Bush at her side strumming along and his mustachioed brother Brandon providing hushed organ in the background, easily topped anything else in this polished spectacle. It certainly earned the loudest and longest round of cheers all night.